Rusted Flame

     Cinder ran. Panic motivated her beyond the exhaustion her body was protesting. If there was any mercy in the world, any gods above or below, she prayed they would grant it to her. Please be alive, please be alive! She repeated over and over in her head like she could impress her own will upon reality. Her life had enough tragedy. Why add more to it?

     Because whatever gods there were seemed to enjoy the pain they put her through.

     “Just where do you think you’re going?” a quizzical voice called out as she rounded a boulder along her path. It sounded like the old man.

     She ignored him and continued on. Socialization wasn’t something she could indulge in with lives potentially on the line.

     Father appeared in front of her, forcing her to skid to a stop. He looked at her disapprovingly. “Is that anyway to treat the elderly? You’re not getting any older, y’know.” he asked.

     “If I don’t hurry, my team won’t live long enough either,” Cinder snapped. She attempted to sidestep the old man.

     “There’s no need to hurry because they’re already dead and gone.” Father replied patiently. His words froze Cinder’s heart. Daggers stabbed at her insides. “The attack came not long after you descended the mountain.”

     Cinder felt her legs threaten to give out, and she made herself sit down before her legs forced her to. “They’re already gone?”

     “Ferried off towards their eternal rest by the Shepherd,” Father kneeled down, offering a comforting hand on her shoulder. “It isn’t your fault.”

     “Then this was all for nothing,” Cinder exclaimed. While she wasn’t one for tears, the frustration of everything that has happened to her threatened to spill over. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. This was just a peaceful archeological expedition!”

     Father adjusted himself so he was now sitting beside her. “There are many twists and turns on the road of life,” he admitted. “And they will not always be pleasant. But this tragedy can still become an opportunity if we conduct ourselves appropriately.”

     “What do you mean?” Cinder felt Father’s hand pull her up from the ground. She stumbled into him, and was surprised by how sturdy the man was. “What could this possibly help us with?”

     “An end to the war, child,” Father replied, taking on a caring tone, like she was his daughter. “The felicity of the elves is found in their past intertwined towards the future.” The old man made an elaborate gesture, and the earth around them began to shake.

     “Have your fire ready, young one. All your fire.” He added as a passageway opened up into the mountain.

     The cave swallowed them both, enveloping them in darkness.

     Cinder produced a flame in her hand. The fire sputtered and sparked, almost like it was unwilling to live. A reflection of her tumultuous mind. Father had already taken off in the dark at a pace barely leaving his silhouette to be caught in the edge of the light of her flames.

     Did Atlas make it quick when he ordered her team killed? Cinder had known him ever since they had served on the front lines together. He was brutal, but efficient. Torture was never the first choice if he could help it. But there had been many times when circumstances forced his hand.

     What had happened since they had last met, she wondered. Five years of fighting could change anyone. Could Atlas be persuaded to put everything aside as she had? With a shudder, Cinder had to admit to herself that it seemed unlikely. Atlas had a level of devotion to their country she lacked. One that she had admired. And now it might be putting them at odds.

     “We’re almost there,” Father called back to her. As he said it, Cinder noticed a familiarity in the terrain. They were in one of the junctions that branched out from the spiral staircase. She wasn’t sure which floor they were on, but reckoned there was something important in the heart of the city that the man had to show her. The question was only how they were going to get out unseen afterwards.

     “Oh, we aren’t going to be leaving the Lost City in any traditional method,” came his cavalier reply when she asked him exactly that. “Well, not by the traditions of today, at any rate. Your forebears had access to transportation thought to be impossible by the standards of the present.” Father stopped at the spiral staircase to pat her on the head. “So often we think of the lives of those long departed as enigmatic and incomprehensible. But in reality they were people just like you and I. They had wants, needs and desires similar to our own.”

     “I know that,” Cinder said halfheartedly. She had her answer ready, but even now as it came out it sounded empty. “But there has to be a commonality between them and us, from culture to ethnicity or mindset. And if it reveals that there is some link between us and the Dokkan, perhaps it can end the war.”

     They had reached the bottom of the spiral staircase, and the ruined doorway that led to nowhere greeted them with stony silence. “An admirable, albeit futile endeavor,” her wizened companion said mournfully. “The majority of both Elves are so caught up in their own self aggrandizing, the past won’t be able to end the conflict at this point.” Father caressed the frame to the doorway. “Only an act of the Divinity can possibly quell the fighting now.”

     Cinder snorted. “As if that could ever happen,” She replied off handedly. “The heavens have been closed to the elves since the conflict began.”

     If not for the fact he looked mournful, Cinder could have sworn Father was smirking at her.

     “You’re joking,” She continued as Father remained silent, staring expectantly at her. “You cannot be serious.”

     “Cinder, I may be inclined to humor now and again,” He said gravely. “But stopping a war is no laughing matter.”

     “Alright, say I believe you. What’s the plan?”

     Father gestured again towards the door. “I will send you to a new world, of sorts. One with creatures unlike the elves in nearly every respect, yet startlingly similar. For example: In this land, you will find their ears are rounded instead of pointed. There, you can gather an army large enough to cow both the Silvan and the Dokkan into passivity.”

     “Round ears,” Cinder repeated. “This place has people like you?”

     He laughed at her question. “My dear, there isn’t anyone quite like me anywhere,” Father answered. “Though, you may encounter more of my own children in the land of Oros. They’ve had to abandon Kos since the War of the Roses began, you see.”

     “Children?”

     “Yes, the Remis. The slimes.”

     Just what are you going on about? So many times Father would say something she would barely understand. Was he implying to have created sentient slimes? Just who was he?

     “I’m going to activate the Gate, now,” Father told her. “While I’m pumping it full of magyk, you’ll have to defend us from any reprisal.”

     “Magyk won’t do anything,” Cinder protested. “My team and I already tried that.”

     Father lifted an eyebrow. “Did you try linking the Gate to another via its temporal coordinates?”

     “Temporal… what?”

     “I thought so,” was all he replied before light began to manifest from within the doorway’s frame.

     A rush of wind enveloped Cinder from the Gate, and she felt her skin clam up as the temperature dropped by several degrees. The ground began to shake, and Cinder was worried the ground would swallow them up. The more superstitious part of her mind tried to convince her that she was in danger, and she had to admit it was hard to ignore. Father was still an unknown quality. While friendly, he made no effort to save her team.

     As the quake began to subside, a large mass fell in front of her. Cinder yelped, then recognized the object. It was a soldier of the Silvan Elves; he must have fallen to his demise by the quake. Looking up, Cinder saw scores of even more elves descending the staircase. Each of them armed to the teeth with magyk and weapons.

     One of them, seeing her notice them, yelled out, “Open fire!”

     Turns out, old instincts were hard to ignore.

     A squad of soldiers fired crossbows down at her. Before she even realized it, Cinder had already conjured a wave of fire to engulf the projectiles. As the flames dissipated, another squad loosed a volley of bolts down upon her. Abruptly, the ground beneath her shook, and Cinder saw that the slab she was standing on was now rapidly rising up to meet the bolts faster.

     Pushing herself flat against the slab, Cinder shot jets of fire over one side. The uneven force reoriented the slab, flipping it in the air and leaving her holding onto the rock by her fingertips. A series of thunks! perforated the other side. Then, planting her feet against the surface, Cinder pushed. Hard! An explosion of fire sent the slab rocketing up towards the soldiers even as she returned to ground level. There was a crackling tremor as rock collided with rock, and several more bodies crashed against the floor beside her.

     The action had taken less than ten seconds. But time had faded away from her senses as old blood began to race with the memory of a thousand skirmishes over a thousand battlefields pulsing within her veins.

     The flames were hungry. And she was willing to feed them.

     Above her, the remaining soldiers skilled in magyk abandoned all pretense of fighting from a distance to continue their descent to Cinder’s level. She evaluated her odds. There were about five in front of her; she had no idea if there were more coming down. All of them were armed with swords, in one hand, with the exception of one, who was armed with a dagger, and sporting some form of elemental magyk as a secondary weapon.

     Fire filled her nostrils as she breathed in and out. Flicking her hands behind her, Cinder fanned a wall of flames to protect Father. Pushing her hands outward, she clapped them back together, making a spear that she then threw towards the center of the soldiers in front of her. The lance struck the elf square in his chest and the lightning died from his fingertips as he fell forward, dead before he even hit the ground. But Cinder didn’t stop there. The moment the weapon had left her hands, she had bounded after it, leaping the remaining ten feet between herself and the remaining soldiers.

     Her opponents didn’t expect her to charge towards them. They stumbled backwards even as she now was squarely between all four of them. With deft hands and even defter motions, Cinder blasted them all with fire at point blank range. The soldiers fell back, their armor cooking them from the inside out as they screamed in agony. Just as soon as it started, everything was over. Leaving her alone with the flames.

     Their ineptitude astounded her. Had she been in their shoes, Cinder would have easily pressed the advantage, swinging a weapon into the center. But these weren’t experienced soldiers. And as much as her body didn’t feel it, she was rusty. Cinder had intended to leap high above them and descend with a fiery kick. Instead her legs had given out halfway into the jump, and all she had done was put herself in needless danger.

     Still, it was better that she was alive. With a gesture, Cinder doused the flames she used as a barrier, revealing Father and the Gate once more. He smiled in contrition. “I apologize for forcing you into this scenario, my dear.”

     Cinder shrugged. “They would have hunted me down regardless. It was either them or me.”

     “But all life is precious. I pray that they were ready to be guided by the Shepherd Queen to the next life, or barring that, allowed to rest,” Father admonished.

     “Is the Gate ready?”

     “Yes, it is,” he answered with a sigh. “Just a warning: the Gate has been inactive for centuries. There may be some fluctuations in gravity and air pressure as it opens, that’s natural.”

     “What!”

     “It’ll make more sense if I just show you.”

     “So you’re running away?” A new voice asked.

     Spinning around, Cinder saw Atlas coming down the stairs. This time, a mixture of Silvan Elves and Cait Sith accompanied him. Her heart dropped into her stomach.

     “I’m not surprised.” Atlas continued. His voice was equal parts hurt and haughty. “You ran five years ago when we were at the precipice of victory. You ran not just five minutes ago when you came to my encampment. And now here you are, running away to wherever this ‘Gate’ can ferry you towards.” He paused to look at her, as if he was looking at the person she used to be. “You used to be made of sterner stuff, ‘Cinder’.”

     “I used to be a killer.” She retorted.

     He waved her comment away. “We’re at war, killing is our business. And you were the best. Now you want peace? We were well on our way towards peace!”

     “Is that what you call it?” Cinder demanded. “The extinction of the Dokkan would lead to peace?”

     “Of course it would, they’re filthy imposters.”

     Remembering the Dokkan on her team, Cinder felt her resolve strengthen. “Then you don’t know the first thing about peace.” Turning her head back towards Father, she said. “Open it.”

     “No!” Atlas barked, but the word was torn away from his mouth as the Gate finally opened.

     As it opened, all the air began to be ripped out of Cinder’s lungs. She felt her feet slide towards it, caught up in the maelstrom it generated. Caught off guard by its pull, Cinder scrambled for purchase, trying to find any way to avoid flying into the void behind the door. Behind her, Atlas and his soldiers faced a similar struggle, victim to the Gate’s whirlwind.

     Unable to resist any longer, Cinder felt the currents drag her towards the door’s maw. And everything went black.